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The attorney general beats McMahon by 25 percentage points, according to the Quinnipiac University poll. That’s a drop from the 33 point lead that Blumenthal held over the former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO in the March Q poll, but still a significant lead.

McMahon has already spent at least $15 million on the race, and has run a series of television ads touting her business experience. But the poll found that 39 percent of voters have an unfavorable opinion of her. That’s an increase over the 26 percent unfavorable rating she received in the March poll.

TomDispatch has an article asking “Will the Obama Administration Allow Shell Oil to Do to Arctic Waters What BP Did to the Gulf?” – BPing the Arctic ?.

Unfortunately, as you’ve already guessed, I’m not here just to tell you about the glories — and extremity — of the Alaskan Arctic, which happens to be the most biologically diverse quadrant of the entire circumpolar north. I’m writing this piece because of the oil, because under all that life and beauty in the melting Arctic there’s something our industrial civilization wants, something oil companies have had their eyes on for a long time now.

If you’ve been following the increasing ecological devastation unfolding before our collective eyes in the Gulf of Mexico since BP’s rented Deepwater Horizon exploratory drilling rig went up in flames (and then under the waves), then you should know about — and protest — Shell Oil’s plan to begin exploratory oil drilling in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas this summer.

On March 31st, standing in front of an F-18 “Green Hornet” fighter jet and a large American flag at Andrews Air Force Base, President Obama announced a new energy proposal, which would open up vast expanses of America’s coastlines, including the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas, to oil and gas development. Then, on May 13th, the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals handed a victory to Shell Oil. It rejected the claims of a group of environmental organizations and Native Inupiat communities that had sued Shell and the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) to stop exploratory oil drilling in the Arctic seas.

Fortunately, Shell still needs air quality permits from the Environmental Protection Agency as well as final authorization from Interior Secretary Ken Salazar before the company can send its 514-foot drilling ship, Frontier Discoverer, north this summer to drill three exploratory wells in the Chukchi Sea and two in the Beaufort Sea. Given what should by now be obvious to all about the dangers of such deep-water drilling, even in far less extreme climates, let’s hope they don’t get either the permits or the authorization.

On May 14th, I called Robert Thompson, the current board chair of Resisting Environmental Destruction on Indigenous Lands (REDOIL). “I’m very stressed right now,” he told me. “We’ve been watching the development of BP’s oil spill in the Gulf on television. We’re praying for the animals and people there. We don’t want Shell to be drilling in our Arctic waters this summer.”

As it happened, I was there when, in August 2006, Shell’s first small ship arrived in the Beaufort Sea. Robert’s wife Jane caught it in her binoculars from her living-room window and I photographed it as it was scoping out the sea bottom in a near-shore area just outside Kaktovik. Its job was to prepare the way for a larger seismic ship due later that month.

Since then, Robert has been asking one simple question: If there were a Gulf-like disaster, could spilled oil in the Arctic Ocean actually be cleaned up?

He’s asked it in numerous venues — at Shell’s Annual General Meeting in The Hague in 2008, for instance, and at the Arctic Frontiers Conference in Tromsø, Norway, that same year. At Tromsø, Larry Persily — then associate director of the Washington office of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, and since December 2009, the federal natural gas pipeline coordinator in the Obama administration — gave a 20-minute talk on the role oil revenue plays in Alaska’s economy.

During the question-and-answer period afterwards, Robert typically asked: “Can oil be cleaned up in the Arctic Ocean? And if you can’t answer yes, or if it can’t be cleaned up, why are you involved in leasing this land? And I’d also like to know if there are any studies on oil toxicity in the Arctic Ocean, and how long will it take for oil there to break down to where it’s not harmful to our marine environment?”

Persily responded: “I think everyone agrees that there is no good way to clean up oil from a spill in broken sea ice. I have not read anyone disagreeing with that statement, so you’re correct on that. As far as why the federal government and the state government want to lease offshore, I’m not prepared to answer that. They’re not my leases, to be real honest with everyone.”

A month after that conference, Shell paid an unprecedented $2.1 billion to the MMS for oil leases in the Chukchi Sea. In October and December 2009, MMS approved Shell’s plan to drill five exploratory wells. In the permit it issued, the MMS concluded that a large spill was “too remote and speculative an occurrence” to warrant analysis, even though the agency acknowledged that such a spill could have devastating consequences in the Arctic Ocean’s icy waters and could be difficult to clean up.

It would be an irony of sorts if the only thing that stood between the Obama administration and an Arctic disaster-in-the-making was BP’s present catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico.

Behind in the polls and behind in fundraising, former Stamford Mayor Dannel Malloy challenged Greenwich cable TV entrepreneur Ned Lamont to 17 debates Wednesday as they launch into the primary season.

Malloy, who faces Lamont on August 10 in the Democratic gubernatorial primary, wants “a different kind of campaign” with debates in all 17 cities and towns that have a daily newspaper.

Malloy wants to have many debates, saying there was only one debate in his unsuccessful 2006 campaign for governor in the Democratic primary – a prime-time, televised debate at the Garde Arts Center in New London.

“One,” Malloy said emphatically when asked by a veteran Capitol political reporter Wednesday how many debates he had in 2006 with New Haven Mayor John DeStefano. “That was the New London one. There were some joint appearances, but not many. I don’t think there were joint appearances after the convention.”

But the archives of The Hartford Courant show that there were at least a dozen debates in 2006 on television, radio, and in front of live audiences around the state. The contests included taped debates that aired on “Beyond The Headlines” on Channel 61 and WFSB-TV, Channel 3. The debate at the Garde theatre was held on July 18 – two months after Malloy’s convention victory. Longtime reporter Mark Davis of Channel 8 held a debate on the morning of the convention, and the two candidates appeared live on WPLR morning radio show and on the Stan Simpson radio show at the time. They also appearance in East Hampton, which was memorable because former Gov. William A. O’Neill was in attendance.

Other debates were not televised live, including the first post-convention debate on June 8, 2006 at Rockville High School in Vernon against DeStefano, who later won the primary. Malloy was happy to see the number of newspaper and television reporters at that debate.

“We have more press at this debate than we had at any of the eight or nine debates in the three weeks, four weeks leading up to the convention,” Malloy said that day in June 2006 in Rockville.

Malloy won the Democratic nomination for the second time at the state party’s convention Saturday, but he has remained behind Lamont in the past three Quinnipiac University polls over the past several months. Another poll is scheduled to be released Thursday morning.

In the proposed debates, Malloy said he and Lamont can “test one another’s intellects, test one another’s conceptions of governance, test one another’s experience, and the applicability of that experience to a state in crisis.”

Malloy unveiled the idea to the Capitol press corps on Wednesday morning without having asked Lamont about it. He said he would be calling Lamont in about two hours to ask him personally.

The Lamont campaign said that U.S. John McCain offered the same proposal during the 2008 presidential campaign, but the difference was that McCain called the Obama campaign in advance before going public.

“Ned and Dan have appeared together more than 20 times already this year, and they’ll do so again before the primary,” said Justine Sessions, a spokeswoman for Lamont. “But even after 20 joint appearances, we still haven’t heard Dan offer a single idea for how to create jobs.  If he wants to try a “different kind of campaign”, that’s where he should start.”

Malloy told reporters that if he called Lamont in advance and Lamont had said no, then Malloy would be holding a press conference criticizing Lamont about not debating.

Roy Occhiogrosso, a political strategist for Malloy, said the Lamont campaign’s response was unclear.

“Is that a yes or a no?” he asked.

Debates have a long history in Connecticut. In a series of debates that are remembered among the most contentious, then-U.S. Sen. Lowell P. Weicker, Jr. and Democratic challenger Toby Moffett traveled around the state for six debates – in the six Congressional districts at the time – in clashes in 1982 that were often broadcast live on public television.

In the general election in 2006, Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell had two debates against DeStefano.

The Hartford Courant’s Jon Lender reports that Malloy made references Wednesday to the famous Lincoln – Douglas debates that have been studied for more than a century in the history books.

“Now I couldn’t have come up with this concept this idea without thinking perhaps of the greatest series of debates in our nation’s history,” Malloy said. “As you know, Lincoln debated Douglas, stood toe to toe for seven debates across the state of Illinois. … Those debates lasted a minimum of three hours. One of them, I am told, went as long as eight hours.  They started with a 60-minute opening statement, followed by a 90-minute opening by the other, followed by a 30-minute rebuttal by the first candidate. Now, I know some people’s attention spans are not as long as they were in 1857, but I also know that people are yearning for information. People want to be informed.”

Malloy continued, “People want to feel that they’re part of  the process. I know that this is a ground breaking concept, and some of you might even dismiss it. There’s no preconceived ground rules. I think what we should do is reach out to the Connecticut Daily Newspaper Association and the Connecticut Broadcasters Association, and to other organizations, and bring them in to get this job done.”

Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.)

By all accounts, Sen. Kay Hagan’s (D-N.C.) amendment to Sen. Chris Dodd’s (D-Conn.) financial regulatory reform bill was an excellent one. The first-term senator had a long-standing reputation in her home state for fighting payday lending, the $42 billion a year industry that offers easy-to-get short-term loans in exchange for hefty fees and annualized percentage rates of interest in the triple digits, as high as 650 percent in some states.

Image by: Matt Mahurin

Hagan’s amendment — the Payday Lending Limitation Act of 2010, cosponsored by Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) — capped the number of times a customer could get a payday loan to six per year. It also required payday lenders to offer borrowers extended repayment plans, letting them pay back their loans in smaller installments over longer periods of time. Payday loans are advertised as emergency stop-gap measures to help customers with sudden expenses. But the average payday loan rolls over between eight and 12 times. And more than 60 percent of payday loans go to borrowers that use them 12 times or more per year.

To illustrate how bad payday loans sometimes got, Hagan told the story of one of her constituents, Sandra Harris from Wilmington. “She had a job at Head Start and always paid her bills on time,” Hagan said on the Senate floor. “When her husband lost his job, Sandra got a $200 payday loan to pay the couple’s car insurance. When she went to repay the loan, she was told she could renew. Sandra ultimately found herself indebted to six different payday lenders, and paid some $8,000 in fees.”

Hagan’s amendment, without banning the financial service, would have stopped the industry’s worst practices — but also its most lucrative practices. Payday lenders make 90 percent of their business from repeat users. If payday loans were capped at six per customer per year, payday lenders could see their business fall by a third or half. Thus, the industry lobbied hard against Hagan’s proposal, as it had done against financial reform in both houses all year — spending $6.1 million on lobbying in 2009, more than double what it did in 2008.

The lobbying effort employed everyone from the grassroots — individual customers — to the highest-powered lawyers. David Lazarus of the Los Angeles Times reported that as Hagan’s amendment came up for a vote in Congress last week, one payday lender instructed his employees, “After a customer repays their loan, the customer then asks for a new loan. TELL YOUR CUSTOMER THAT YOU CAN’T LOAN TO THEM BECAUSE THE GOVERNMENT HAS PUT US OUT OF BUSINESS. That will get their attention. Then ask them to write letters or call their senator/congressman.” A flurry of letters written at check cashers or payday loan shops showed up in Congress.

On May 20, Hagan’s amendment came up in the Senate. Durbin stood up in support, calling payday lenders the “bottom feeders” of the financial industry. Then, as Dodd moved to proceed, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) — who in 2009 received more campaign donations from payday lenders than any other Senator — blocked unanimous consent to vote on the popular provision. (Shelby’s office did not respond to repeated requests for comment.) It died on the floor.

Hagan’s was the last of many such payday-lender-specific provisions to come up in the regulatory reform process. And it was the last to fail. There are no interest-rate or rollover caps in the Senate bill. And there are none in the House either.

Durbin argued for capping the maximum annualized percentage rate of interest a payday lender could charge at 36 percent, for instance, a measure supported by the Center for Responsible Lending and other consumer groups. It never made it into the bill, nor did Rep. Jackie Speier’s (D-Calif.) version in the House. Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) — who has in the past advocated effectively banning payday lending — sponsored the Payday Loan Act of 2009, a series of reforms attached to the House bill. Consumer reform groups blasted the measures, which capped annualized percentage rates of interest at 391 percent. But even those very modest reforms did not make it in. And the most notable payday lender victory might have come from the work of Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who reportedly lobbied for and won a loosening of the Consumer Financial Protection agency’s oversight over small payday lenders.

One might think this would have consumer advocates incensed about the House and Senate bills’ ability to stop the worst practices in the payday lending industry. But, in fact, they argue that payday lenders spent millions to win numerous battles before ultimately losing the war.

Why? Payday lenders in both bills still come entirely under the rule-making authority and oversight of the new Consumer Financial Protection Agency, which consumer advocates are confident will consider tamping down on annualized percentage rates of interest and establishing rollover limits. There has been considerable confusion over the Senate’s payday lending language and possible loopholes. It ensures the Consumer Financial Protection Agency has oversight and rule-making authority over all payday lenders, with the CFPA enforcing rules against bigger lenders and the Federal Trade Commission enforcing rules against smaller lenders, Kirstin Brost of the Senate Banking Committee said. And the House language, simply having the CFPA have total authority over all payday businesses, as supported by the White House and Treasury, is likely to win out.

“In the end, it doesn’t matter much that Congress didn’t specifically regulate payday lenders,” Ed Mierzwinski, the consumer program director at the U.S. Public Interest Research Group explains. “For the payday lenders to call the defeat of the Hagan a win for them is a Pyrrhic victory — because both both the House and Senate bills include a strong new consumer financial protection agency and it will regulate them.”

And Kathleen Day, the spokesperson for the Center for Responsible Lending, which worked with Senators on crafting payday lending restrictions and has fought a longtime and vocal fight against the businesses, concurs. “The [CFPA] will be able to enact strong consumer protections that would apply to payday lenders. As long as those protections are in there, that’s the name of the game,” she says. “There’s going to be people that say they want to be specific, they want to have specific provisions in this law about payday lending. But the great thing about having this agency is that it will have broad overview to write fair laws and to make sure laws are fair.

“Of course, we’d love to have a 36 percent [annualized percentage rate of interest] cap. But that’s unlikely. And sometimes regulations can be too specific. We are confident [the CFPA] will be able to react to the market in a flexible, consumer-focused way.”

Indeed, behind the scenes, payday lenders — much like auto dealers who make car loans — fought hardest for an exemption from CFPA authority. That battle, they spent millions to lose. And it means that consumers might win down the road.

This leaked photo is the first official pic of the new Volkswagen Passat, according to AutoBild magazine who hasn’t revealed the source of the photo, though. If what we’re looking at is, in fact a photo and not a rendering or drawing, we can see the new Volkswagen front-end on display in what is clearly a Phaeton-inspired design.

Although rumours are that the new Passat could be presented at the 2010 Paris Motor Show, it has been earmarked as a 2012 model. We reported that a new 2.0 BiTDI engine would debut, and we could also see the more powerful V6, 3.6-litre engine with 300 hp appear. In the future, a possible BlueMotion hybrid model could appear.

Generally speaking, the new Volkswagen Passat won’t be lacking in technology. A seven-speed DSG gearbox and AWD options should be part of the package, along with Dynamic Light Assist, Lane Departure Warning, self-parking system and even a wiperless windscreen.

Source | Autobild via WCF

A congressional hearing will take place regarding quality control practices both at McNeil and parent company Johnson & Johnson, the Chicago Tribune indicates.

After the massive recall of Tylenol and other over-the-counter drugs, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) inspected the quality control practices being implemented at a Pennsylvania plant run by McNeil Consumer Health Care, a subsidiary of pharmaceutical Johnson & Johnson. FDA declared there is an inadequate training for its employees. Its latest Tylenol recall of 40 products happened April 30 that could have stripped $400 million from the company.

Other defects include substandard equipment, bacterial contamination of materials, and around 46 neglected complaints even before the recall. Good manufacturing practice is missing, said Prabir Basu, Purdue University.

Professor of Pharmacoecomomics Albert Wertheimer at Temple University believes it contributed to the shrinkage in its workforce.”I would suspect it’s a matter of trying to get by with less, but in this case it didn’t work,” he scrutinized.

Other McNeil plants under investigation are based in Lancaster, Pa., and Las Piedras, Puerto Rico.

Related posts:

1. Tylenol Recall 2010 by McNeil Consumer Healthcare
2. McNeil Promises Quality Repair
3. Congress Investigates Johnson & Johnson

When it comes to RPGs, I don’t even need to explain how far up Square Enix is atop the gaming Olympus. It is, however, a bit surprising to find out that someone from the esteemed publisher said

Stephen Conroy, the Australian politician who has been pushing hard to massively filter and censor Australia’s internet has been fighting Google for a while now. After the company made comments about why such censorship was a bad idea, rather than respond to the issues, Conroy came out swinging by attacking the company for its Buzz privacy mishap, and quoting Eric Schmidt out of context. So, of course, with Google’s WiFi data capture admission, Conroy has some new ammo. He’s claiming that it couldn’t possibly have been an accident and that this represents “the largest privacy breach in history across Western democracies.”

While it’s no surprise that Conroy doesn’t like Google and its opposition to his plan to censor the internet, perhaps he should stay away from laughably ridiculous hyperbole. The only data Google collected was what was passed over open WiFi connections in the split seconds that it drove by those access points with its Street View vehicles. These are networks where anyone on those networks could have just as easily have done the same thing — except if someone was really on one of those networks, they could keep recording that data, rather than moving on when the traffic light changed. Furthermore, there’s no evidence that Google ever did anything whatsoever with whatever data it did collect. Making claims about this being some huge privacy breach when there’s no evidence that anyone ever even saw the data seems pretty questionable.

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A Sport Sedan Worthy of 3-Series Association
Trevor Hofmann, Canadian Auto Press

Lexus introduced its first IS as a competitor to BMW’s 3 and Mercedes’ C, and while it was a credible sport sedan its Toyota roots showed through too strongly to pull in many of the upwardly mobile. Lexus made sure that when its second generation IS hit the streets it wouldn’t suffer the same fate by endowing it with the one thing its predecessor lacked, killer styling.

Even in its fourth year of production the IS looks crisp and edgy, and while sales are up significantly from the previous generation, Lexus’ smallest hardly suffers from ubiquity. It just might wear the L-finesse design language better than any other Lexus, well proportioned and assertive in its stance. And with the new F-Sport alloy wheels and modified grille and spoilers it looks ready for the track.

2010 Lexus IS 250 F-Sport

More than just enhancing appearances, the larger diameter 18-inch rims and 225/40R18 all-season performance tires they’re wrapped in add grip. The IS is already an excellent handler, whether in 250 or 350 guise, but the upgraded wheels and tires make a marked improvement amid fast, tight curves. My IS 250 tester tracked with precision and poise when pushed hard, and when driven laid back and relaxed was a comfortable traveling companion, albeit with a slightly firmer ride than it would have had with the stock 16-inch wheel and tire package.

The IS 250 is not only a competent handler, but I must admit that this sedan’s DOHC, 24-valve, 2.5-litre V6 is more engaging than its numbers foretell. Horsepower is a reasonable 204 that comes on at 6,400 rpm, while torque is merely 185 at 4,800 rpm, but something about how this all comes together makes the IS 250 a hoot to drive, and my example didn’t even have the standard six-speed manual, but rather the six-speed automatic with manual mode.

The 250 is the only IS that offers all-wheel drive, and while it delivers greater traction in foul weather it also adds 89 kilos (196 lbs) to the base IS 250’s 1,567-kilogram (3,455-lb) curb weight that, together with driveline drag, is a bane to fuel economy with a comparative estimated rating of 9.8 L/100km in the city and 6.8 on the highway for the similarly optioned automatic transmission-equipped rear-wheel drive version and 10.5 L/100km in the city and 7.6 on the highway for the all-wheel drive model. There’s also an argument for going with an automatic, as the rear-drive car with a manual transmission gets 11.4 L/100km in the city and 7.5 on the highway. Something to consider is the IS 250’s thirst for premium fuel, however, a significant additional cost over regular.

If you’re concerned that the AWD model’s ride height, which is up 15 mm (0.6 inches) over the rear-drive car, slightly increases its centre of gravity, don’t worry as it comes standard 17-inch alloy wheels that no doubt make up for any nominal handling discrepancy.

The upgraded 18-inch rims and exterior add-ons I spoke of a minute ago are new for 2010 and come as part of the F-Sport Package. It also includes adaptive bi-xenon headlamps, rain-sensing wipers, and auto-dimming exterior mirrors with reverse tilt function on the outside, plus premium seats, aluminum sport pedals, a wallet-size smart key card, and stainless steel scuff plates on the inside.

Other new for 2010 features include standard integrated XM satellite radio, USB audio connectivity, and a windshield de-icer. These items get added to standard dual-zone automatic climate control, power locks with proximity sensing keyless entry and pushbutton start, auto up/down on all windows, heated mirrors, variable intermittent wipers, a six-CD/MP3 stereo with auxiliary input, audio controls on the spokes of the leather-wrapped tilt and telescopic steering wheel, cruise control, sport cloth seats, and a rear seat pass-through (hmmm… no 60/40 split rear seatbacks).

The pass-through is handy for a set of skis or two, and the trunk holds a reasonable amount of cargo at 378 litres (13.3 cubic feet). Keep in mind that this is a small car, despite its premium image. It measures only 4,575 mm (180.1 inches) long, 1,800 mm (70.9 inches) wide and rides on a wheelbase of merely 2,730 mm (107.4 inches), so if you need a cargo hold sized more like the Camry you’re moving up from, you might consider something larger like Lexus’ ES 350.

Now that we’re being so practical, safety features include driver and passenger knee airbags and all the expected airbags, standard traction and stability control, plus of course, ABS-enhanced four-wheel discs designed for performance driving. Oh, and I almost forgot. There’s a first-aid kit included too. The standard warranty is 4 years or 80,000 km limited bumper to bumper, and 6 years or 110,000 km for the powertrain, which is better than most in the premium sector.

I know I’m being all pragmatic about a car that’s really designed to spark enthusiasm from the sport sedan crowd, but the reality is you’re going to have to live with it day in and day out, so it’s important to factor in all the variables. And doing so, puts the 2010 Lexus IS 250 in a good light. It’s a great looking car, especially in F-Sport trim, delivers surprising off-the-line performance and handles like a dream. Properly fitted it delivers a nice luxurious experience too, with most of the features premium buyers demand. Add up all the benefits and then factor in a starting price of $34,400, and it starts to make sense. Lexus really got the second generation IS right. It’s a sport sedan worthy of 3 Series association.

In any Resident Evil game, once you whip out the magnum, you’re ready to put serious hurt into your target. Chris Redfield will be keeping one handy in Marvel vs. Capcom 3, as well as other weapons

The annual Doodle 4 Google competition came to a close with a winner being chosen from the more than 33,000 submissions. The winning doodle belongs to Makenzie Melton, a third grader at El Dorado Springs R-2 Schools in El Dorado Springs, Missouri. Her work was entitled “Rainforest Habitat” and will be featured on the Google homepage … (read more)

Luke Timmerman wrote:

When genomics pioneer J. Craig Venter stepped before the cameras last week and claimed that he engineered the first bacterial cell with an entirely synthetic genome, he actually had a lot of help. One of the key players he relied on behind the scenes was a privately held company in Bothell, WA, called Blue Heron Biotechnology.

Venter’s team in San Diego and Maryland went through an elaborate process to “boot up” the bacterial cell by stitching together more than 1,000 stretches of DNA that were each more than 1,000 chemical base units in length. The sequences were designed on a computer, but Venter’s team hired the people at Blue Heron to take care of the next vital step—the job of synthesizing all that data into genes that gave rise to the famous bacterial cell. Blue Heron was singled out for a kudo in the J. Craig Venter Institute’s press release, and got a line in Nicholas Wade’s story in the New York Times. (Blue Heron even got a little publicity from hometown KOMO-TV.)

Beneath the scientific implications and ethical debate, there’s actually an intriguing business story. For Blue Heron, it’s emblematic of its growing capabilities in the emerging field of synthetic biology, and the increasingly powerful things it can enable its customers to do. The company is one of five contract firms around the world that are ushering in an “industrialized” era of molecular biology. The idea is to take a time-consuming, costly process of synthesizing genes in the lab, and automate it into something much cheaper, faster, and more reliable.

While the Seattle-area company doesn’t disclose its revenue, or say whether it is profitable, it currently provides its service to 19 of the world’s top 20 pharmaceutical companies and a growing cadre of academic researchers, says John Mulligan, Blue Heron’s founder and chief scientific officer. The company’s business is “sustainable” for the future with its current team of about 35 employees, he says.

“Customers are saying ‘At this price, it doesn’t make sense to do any molecular biology internally anymore,’” Mulligan says. “Several companies have outsourced [DNA synthesis] completely.”

The field has made dramatic strides over the past decade. Mulligan, who previously ran one of the sequencing centers at Stanford University that played a role in the Human Genome Project, left to start Blue Heron in 1999. He got some seed investment in the early days from Leroy Hood and David Galas, a couple of the co-founders of Darwin Molecular, a one-time highflier where Mulligan worked for a time in the mid-90s.

Back in Blue Heron’s founding days, cost was the big barrier preventing the synthesis of DNA sequences in any systematic way. But the price per base pair, or chemical unit of DNA, plummeted about 90 percent over the company’s first nine years. That made it cheap enough for drug companies to order manufactured genes, rather than assign the task of making them to young scientists or skilled technicians in-house.

And the trend has only continued. Two years ago, Blue Heron would synthesize genes for about $1.50 to $2 for each chemical base pair of DNA—now the same genes can be had for 40 cents to $1 per base pair, Mulligan says, depending on their complexity. Some researchers order short genes that are only 200 chemical units long, but Blue Heron can synthesize really complicated genes that can go as long as 200,000 units long, Mulligan says. If a customer wants to slip in a single letter variation here and there, an insertion of an extra letter or a deletion, Blue Heron has shown over time it can deliver the exact sequence the researcher wants, within one to three weeks of turnaround time.

While falling per-unit prices sound bad for Blue Heron’s overall revenue, Mulligan says his company has been able to offset that decline a couple ways. One is …Next Page »

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UNDERWRITERS AND PARTNERS

This goes some way to explaining why employees at Foxconn may be killing themselves. According to The Telegraph, Foxconn pays 110,000 Yuan ($16,100) to the family of each person who dies. That’s ten years’ salary, on average. More »










Foxconn – Apple – Suicide – China – Shenzhen

Here’s a still from the Deepwater Horizon live feed captured on BP’s site just a couple moments ago.

Hopefully what we’re looking at is gushing mud, not gushing oil. There are no fresh updates on “Top Kill,” — nothing to suggest that last night’s progress had been undermined. At some point today, we’re guessing, we’ll get a more definitive answer.

Join the conversation about this story »

The Telegraph Media Group and Sanuk Games have already released Telegraph Crosswords for the DS in UK and Ireland, which basically gives players 500 crossword puzzles for the price of 500 DSi Points. Today, the collaboration announced

If you don’t want to bang down ten notes for the full-fat Chinatown Wars iPhone app, this free “Lite” version is worth checking out. It provides a good taste of the Nintendo DS game, with the first three missions playable. More »










IPhone – App Store – Smartphones – Handhelds – Nintendo DS

Here’s Dunlop’s first two awesome stunt videos to advertise their SP StreetResponse tires dedicated to city cars.

Called the Dunlop Challenges, the first video is the Loop the Loop” world record done in collaboration with British TV show Fifth Gear, where stuntman Steve Truglia using a specially prepared Toyota Aygo, takes the Japanese car up and around a 12,19 mt high loop.

The second ad uses three Citroen C1’s and the stunt drivers perform extreme all reverse driving manoeuvres: J-turns, jumps, slaloms to demonstrate the manoeuvrability of Dunlops StreetResponse tires.

Hit the the jump for the second video.

Hikari no 4 Senshi: Final Fantasy Gaiden has been out in Japan since late last year, but now that Square Enix has trademarked its Western name, Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light is ready for release

The Challenge

Whilst campaigning I have frequently found myself opting to take the easy route:  preaching to the converted. This is not what I consider campaigning in the true sense. Whilst it may make me feel better, I may feel like I’ve done ‘my bit’, it does not involve changing minds nor does it tackle the apathy and ignorance that are unfortunately all to prevalent in relation to development issues. Put bluntly, it gets us no closer to tackling poverty and climate justice.

This acknowledged, the Liverpool University Oxfam Society thought long and hard about an event that would attract those who would never usually have anything to do with Oxfam and that would demonstrate to them that you don’t have to don a pair of MC Hammer pants, a pair of sandals nor eat lentils to live a more ethical lifestyle.

The Solution

*Drum roll please * A glamorous, cutting-edge, vintage and ethical ball.

We hired The Egg Café in Liverpool and served up a lip-smackingly good veggie three course meal; we provided fairly traded wine; and guests were required to come in their finest vintage, fair trade or charity shop glad rags. The after party, organised in conjunction with two other societies, ACE Africa and Campaign Against Climate Change, was held at MelloMello, a volunteer led community outreach venue and live music was enjoyed through a carbon neutral bicycle powered sound system. 

Our message was simple: ethical living can be fun and easily incorporated into everyday life. A fair and just world for all demands that each and everyone one of us makes life style changes.  The ethical ball demonstrated the ease with which some of these changes, such as buying fair trade where possible and eating less meat, can be made.

 P.S. If you’re feeling inspired and want some tips on how to become more ethical, the following websites are a great place to start:

http://www.ethiscore.org/

http://www.ethical-living.org/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/ethical-living